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December 30, 2007

4 World Series MVPs

Reader Brett writes:

This might be well known but I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else. Next year with Lowell, Ramirez, Schilling and Beckett the Sox will be starting 4 world series MVPs - has any other team ever been close to that? I checked the 1990 Yankees but those MVPs tended to be leaving. Just a little bit of trivia.

I checked here and it looks like the 2008 Red Sox will be the first team in baseball history to have four World Series MVPs on its roster (Lowell 2007, Ramirez 2004, Beckett 2003, Schilling 2001).

Maybe Boston has only 3.5 MVPs, since Schilling was a co-MVP in 2001. Even so, no other team has had 3.5. (However, since two of them are starting pitchers, it's highly unlikely they would field all four in the same game.)

John Wetteland was the Yankees' 1996 MVP, but left that winter and was out of baseball by 2001. Terry won in 1962, but then Turley was not with the Yankees in 1963. Since the World Series MVP award goes back only to 1955, I don't think I missed any other possibilities.

Edit: The 1977 Reds had two MVPs (Joe Morgan 1975 and Johnny Bench 1976), but they also had a 24-year-old part-time infielder named Ray Knight, who would later win the MVP in 1986. But since we are talking past winners, they don't count. Eff you, Big Red Machine!

I guess with the '81 tri-MVPs you're getting into thirds, but the '82 Dodgers would've had three third-MVPs. Then in '83, Cey leaves, but future MVP Hershiser joins Yeager and Guerrero for a total of, uh, 1.6 repeating.

Okay, between the end of the 1993 World Series (October 23rd) and November 5th (the day Jack Morris was released), the Blue Jays had four World Series MVPs on their roster--Morris, Stewart, Borders, Molitor. Never on the same field together, unless you include the '93 celebration in the moments after Molitor was named MVP. (Although if the votes were in early....)

Another team with three including a future was the 1988 Tigers--Trammel, Knight, Morris.

Aaron Small played with a lot of World Series MVPs. In his major league debut in 1994 (the only game he'd play in that year), he pitched in a game started by Dave Stewart, which had Pat Borders and Paul Molitor in his lineup.

In 2006, in his second to last game in the majors, he pitched in between Randy Johnson and Mariano Rivera, with Derek Jeter in the lineup.